


and live anyway

by BananaStrings



Category: Passengers (2016)
Genre: Emotionally Compromised, Ethical Dilemmas, Everybody Lives, Honesty, Isolation, M/M, Optimism, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29864001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BananaStrings/pseuds/BananaStrings
Summary: Jim never found Aurora's hibernation pod, because he found Captain Mancuso's first.
Relationships: Gus Mancuso/Jim Preston





	and live anyway

Jim loved the world. He loved the easiness and the softness that humanity had embraced. They had finally accepted human nature instead of trying to change it. People were foolish and childish and destructive, and so the work, the good work of humanity, had turned to child-proofing and fool-proofing the world. 

Jim had always worked to make everything as simple and soft and calm as possible, so that people could feel safe and empowered just by pushing a button or speaking a command. He had no place on this perfectly polished gem of a ship. His feelings of safety and empowerment came from being challenged and tasked with fixing and tinkering and messing with things. He loved the rough turned smooth. Without the rough, he felt no purpose.

He knew what he was searching for, as he worked pod to pod to pod, taking up his data pad to watch the introduction video of each passenger. He was looking for someone like him, someone who thrived on complex problems. He was treating this like any other job.

However, these little glimpses into people's live, the stories they told, he couldn't pull them apart like a machine to find the inner workings. His mind didn't work like that. They all seemed precious and whole, and he couldn't imagine breaking into their peace with his disquiet.

He talked to them. He hugged their hibernation pods. He kissed the clear, smooth, plastic domes one after another and tried to bless them on their journey to a new life, not this life, not the one he was tasked with living. It wasn't until he was working his way through the second room of sleepers that he noticed it. The man in this pod had a different shade of wristband.

Jim rushed to the pod's data-tag and read him listed as _Deck Captain_. Hope surged in him like electricity, making him feel alive again, not like the ghost that had been haunting the sleepers’ dreams. This was the deviation in the pattern. This was something out of place. This was what he had been looking for.

He didn’t want to watch his video. He didn’t want to see him as whole and precious. Jim only wanted to see his function, his purpose, his title, but the more he looked, the more he saw. _Gus Mancuso's_ skin was deep and brown. His black hair was going silvery gray. He had a wide face, wide eyes, and wide palms. Jim recognized worker’s hands. He recognized narrows hips and a soft stomach from stress, from life as a fixer.

Jim knew—in his bones—this man would wake up and think first and foremost about solutions.

He tried to walk away, tried to make boundaries, tried to limit how much time he was allowed to sit by this man's pod and stare at him. He tried to stop re-reading the pod manual for the hundredth time. He tried to stop arraying his tools in the exact order he'd need them, over and over. 

Jim tried to use ethics, logic, compassion, anything he'd been taught about right and wrong. Hell, he'd even tried to pray, and that wasn't something he'd ever done; well, save for his first attempts to return to sleep in his own pod, immediately after its malfunction, and that hadn't done him any good.

Now he'd simply been reduced to yelling. He was banging on the dome and shouting:

"Tell me what to do! You’re the captain. That’s your job. Please, I can’t do this by myself."

But, he was, and he didn't know if he was cruel enough to task this man with the same impossible challenge he now faced. But, what if it wasn’t impossible? What if Captain Mancuso knew something? The chaos in his mind continued, bounding from one unanswerable question to the next.

"Just tell me what to do."

He slept on peacefully. Dreamlessly. 

"We’re all ghosts here, aren’t we?" Jim realized. "Waiting for the next life." 

The strange horror of it hit him all at once. This choice he’d made, leaving behind all the people he’d known and loved to turn to ghosts behind him, as he traveled to another world. Ageless. Unchanging. It was monstrous. He wondered how many flights this man had taken. How many hundreds of years had passed in his lifetime. 

Jim Preston finally took up Gus Mancuso’s video. At the first syllable the man spoke, voice warm and rough and sure, Jim had to stop the vid, overcome with grief. Like he was missing him. Like he was a dead loved one. Even though they’d never met, and the man lived. 

He knew he wouldn’t be able to stop himself now. Jim knew the tide had turned in his mind. No longer was he condemning a man to inevitable death; he was freeing him from something worse. This timeless, ageless nothing. He would break him out. He would let him live.

***

They said that after the second hibernation it got easier. This was his third now. He felt more machine than man most days, but this one was easier than even he’d expected. He stretched his arms up, as he was raised to an upright position by the sleeping platform. Didn’t need to open his eyes, he hit the off-button on the side of the console in front of him by muscle memory to stop the holographic welcome into waking life. 

"Something’s wrong," came a man’s voice to his right. 

Gus blinked open his eyes with a deep breath. There was always something wrong. Passengers always had questions and complaints for their deck captain. He looked right and felt his brows come down. Captain Mancuso sat slowly and tilted his head to the side at the sight in front of him, as though a different angle would bring him clarity. 

"Did you wake up like that?" 

The shaggy head and fluffy beard shook no at him. A couple more blinks and he could feel his mind coming back to life more completely. He stared at the man, who stared back. 

"How long?" 

"One year and 3 weeks." 

Captain Mancuso dropped his eyes, as he tried to process. He needed more information. He rose, and the man’s eyes went wide. The passenger scrambled up from where he’d been crouched next to the pod’s base. Beside his feet Gus could see the tools and the open control boards. He froze for a moment. Well, that answered one question. 

"Bring your tools. I need to check your pod." 

The man obeyed, clumsy and quick, and stood at his shoulder sedately, till prompted:

"Lead the way." 

As they walked, Captain Mancuso's mind filled with stories about boys lost in the forest and raised by wolves. His ship was almost alive. She thought, she worked, and she prioritized. She almost cared. As much as her programmers could make her. He felt himself relaxing. He could work with a man who’d been companion to his ship. 

"Aren’t you angry?" the man mumbled.

"As a passenger, it was your right to ask for—"

"My right? I don’t have the right to your life." 

Ah, _he_ was angry. Angry at the company that failed him and at the closest representative who could respond to that anger. Gus wasn’t going to ask how far from their destination they were. He couldn’t make himself ask yet. He needed to start slow. 

"My name is Gus." 

"I know," the man replied quietly. 

When he didn’t continue, Gus went back to his work. 

"The circuit connecting your pod to the ship’s clock burnt out. Simple as that. Now we have to figure out how that happened. Are there other malfunctions you’ve noticed?" 

The man nodded. 

"A lot of little things. Elevators and cleaning robots and holograms." 

Gus shook his head. 

"That shouldn’t be happening." 

"None of this should be happening," the man replied, and there was the anger back again. "It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. I can’t _do_ anything." 

The passenger was shaking, looking shocked at his own outburst, looking down at his hands, like they’d failed him, betrayed him. Gus realized there’d been no comfort. The ship was not designed to offer it in circumstances like this, because there never were circumstances like this. 

"Can you tell me your name?" 

"It’s Jim," he said at once, snatching up the chance to do something. 

"I know," Gus replied with a little smile, gesturing to the pod’s data-tag in front of him. 

Jim smiled back and gave a tremulous little huff that seemed to be a laugh. He seemed calmer after that. He focused on the diagnostic pad that they used, while searching through the generator bay for the source of the trouble. The problem was not hard to find. And, the reset was, as with all the tasks on this vessel, childishly simple. 

It was not the triumphant feeling, when order was restored, that Gus had been expecting. It was usually satisfaction that came from this job. Instead he felt haunted by 5258 deaths. 

"We would have died in our sleep," he murmured, sitting on a shelf-like wall base.

Jim just sat beside him and nodded. 

"Why did you choose to wake me?" Gus asked. 

Jim was silent for a long time before looking toward him. 

"I don’t know." 

And, Captain Mancuso laughed. What else could he do? But, Jim seemed enthralled, eyes going bright and wondering. Gus kept looking at him, reminded of why he’d done this job, herding people around in little lines and clusters—because there was no joy in order without chaos. 

Captain Mancuso looked away then, as there was one last point of order.

"There is one emergency hibernation pod in Medical. It's there in case a passenger becomes injured or ill during departure or arrival in a way that the staff doesn't have the resources to treat. My wristband can activate it."

He gestured with the arm that had the band on it, as he turned to check Jim's response. Jim looked terrified.

"It can't be self-activated," Gus said to try to calm him. "Neither of us could use it without the other's consent."

Jim's fear faded, but he said nothing. What was there to say, really? This wasn't exactly a rock paper scissors situation. Instead of speaking, Jim scooted closer, till his side was pressed to Gus's. His warmth began to seep through the thick, blue uniform that Captain Mancuso wore. Jim didn't have to speak for Gus to understand. It was impossible to live this life alone. Gus sighed, and Jim sighed reflexively with him.

"No," Gus decided quietly. "We stick together."

Jim slumped against him now, heavy and pliant. Gus raised his gaze to the milky, smooth composite walls and the graceful, curved ceiling. He would never have been able to afford a retirement this luxurious on his Company salary. One side of his mouth turned up in rebellious pride that he was finally getting paid in full for his service. This was his house.

He'd even been gifted with a companion, who would be nothing if not loyal. Jim had begun to breathe deeply and slowly. When Gus looked over, he saw that he'd also begun to drool just slightly on his shoulder, having fallen asleep in absolute relief. Gus smiled fully, knowing there would be just enough chaos to keep things worthwhile.


End file.
